HENRY WALLACE DID HIS BEST TO CONVINCE
TRUMAN TO QUIT LISTENING TO THE RICH FOLKS
WHO WANTED TO BULLY RUSSIA AND THE REST OF
THE WORLD
Henry Wallace tried to stop the madmen who were governing the foreign affairs of the U.S. in 1945--1947. In July 1946, he wrote a long letter to Truman, repudiating the "growing feeling that another war is coming and the only way we can head it off is to arm ourselves to the teeth. All past of past history indicates that an armament race does not lead to peace but to war." He saw the coming months as very possibly "the crucial period which will decide whether the civilized world will go down in destruction afer the five or ten years needed for several nations to arm themselves with atomic bombs." He urged Truman to consider how "American actions since V-J Day appear to other nations," pointing to "$13 billion for the War and Navy Departments, the Bikini tests of the atomic bomb and continued production of bombs, the plan to arm Latin America with our weapons, production of B-29s and planned production of B-36s, and the effort to secure air bases spread over half the globe from which the other half of the globe can be bombed. . . This makes it appear either [1] that we are preparing ourselves to win the war which we regard as inevitable or [2] that we are trying to build up a predominance of force to intimidate the rest of mankind. How would it look to us if Russia had the tomic bomb and we did not, if Russia had 10,000 --mile bombers and air bases within a thousand miles of our coastlines and we did not ?"
DEFENSE SPENDING THAT UNJUSTLY
ENRICHES---WW II MADE THAT INDUSTRY
AWARE THAT THE FEDERAL TREASURY
WAS A MARKET TO BE EXPLOITED
Wallace called for sharply cutting defense spending, because maintaining peace by a "preponderance of forces is no longer possible." In 1938, the United States spent less than $1 billion on national defense. Now, he calculated, the War and Navy Departments, war liquidation, ans interest on public debt and veterans' benefits, representing the cost of past wars, consumed $28 billion, or 80 percent of the current $36 billion budget. Wallace reiterated scientists' warnings that "atomic warfare is cheap" and even having ten times as many bombs as one's enemy gives no decisive advantage. "And most important, the very fact that several nations have atomic bombs will inevitably result in a neurotic, fear-ridden, itching-trigger psychology . . . In a world armed with atomic weapons, some incident will lead to the use of those weapons." He forcefully dismissed those advocating "preventive war," whose "scheme is not only immoral but stupid." The only solution, he concluded, "consists of mutual trust and confidence among nations, atomic disarmament, and an effective system of enforcing that disarmament."
Wallace's peace offensive was aided by two significant publications that summer of 1946. In late August, The New Yorker devoted an entire issue to John Hersey's "Hiroshima" that did more to humanize the victims of the atomic bombings than any other contemporary English-language publication. In September, Look magazine began publishing a four-part series by Elliott Roosevelt that detailed how his father's and Stalin's plans for postwar peace and collaboration were derailed by Truman and Churchill. Truman would later dismiss Roosevelt's son as the "product of a piss erection."
Wallace understood the urgency of the situation. He looked forward to a major address on September 12 in New York's Madison Square Garden. The speech is reproduced in the e-mail that accompanies this missive. It was absolutely incendiary. Republican Senator Robert Taft accused Truman of betraying Byrnes, who was irate over being so publicly repudiated. The warmongers demanded that Truman muzzle Wallace. Truman fired Wallace on September 20, 1946.
MUCH MORE TO COME
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